GENI Foundation

28/10/2026

Australia has deployed solar panels on its sheep stations — and the 60 million sheep across Australia's pastoral zones are grazing in partial shade from solar installations that simultaneously power remote homesteads, water pumps, and electric fencing while discovering that shaded pastures retain 40% more soil moisture in Australian summer droughts.
Sheep farming across Australia's extensive pastoral zone — the 4 million square kilometres of semi-arid and arid land where sheep outnumber people by 30 to 1 — is managed on cattle station economics: enormous land areas, minimal infrastructure investment per hectare, and perpetual vulnerability to drought that periodically devastates stock numbers and pastoral incomes.
The AgriSolar Sheep programme — developed by the University of New South Wales Rural Technology Centre and commercialised by Agrivoltaic Australia — installs elevated solar arrays at 2.5-metre clearance height above sheep pastures in the semi-arid zones of New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia. The panels shade approximately 25% of pasture area, reducing soil evaporation from 8 to 12 litres per square metre per day to 4 to 6 litres — a 40% moisture retention improvement that persists through drought periods when unshaded soils become too dry to sustain pasture growth.
The energy generated powers remote homestead electricity, solar-powered water pumping that replaces diesel pump sets, and electric fencing systems that improve rotational grazing management. For a typical 10,000-hectare sheep station, the solar installation eliminates AUD 85,000 in annual diesel costs while providing AUD 45,000 in electricity revenue from grid export.
Australia's sheep have been fighting drought for 200 years. Solar panels are helping them win.
Source: University of New South Wales Rural Technology Centre & Agrivoltaic Australia Pty Ltd, AgriSolar Sheep Programme Evaluation Report 2024

21/10/2026

"There can be no 'plan B' because there is no 'planet B'" - Ban Kimoon

14/10/2026

Memories from a decade back on how South Australia's freak typhoon, state-wide blackout, and restoration essentially started much of the big battery surge across the world:
"In March 2017, Lyndon Rive, Tesla's vice-president for energy products, at the time visiting Australia, boasted that his company could alleviate SA's immediate problems by building a giant battery, and it could do so within 100 days of a signing a contract for less than $100 million.
The Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes saw the boast reported in the Australian Financial Review and addressed a tweet directly to Tesla's boss, Elon Musk.
""Holy S #%t", he wrote. "Lyndon & - how serious are you about this bet? If I can make the $ happen (& politics), can you guarantee the 100MW in 100 days?"
Musk took up the challenge. "Tesla will get the system installed and working in 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you? he replied.
In the end, the battery was built in 63 days from the signing of the contract, and the consequences of the challenge are hard to exaggerate."
By: 1,000% renewables for South Australia.

10/10/2026

Under a motorway bridge, air rarely stays still.
Vehicles push large volumes of air through narrow spaces, bridge structures redirect wind, and open gaps beneath the deck can create steady movement that normally goes unused. In Germany, compact wind turbines have been installed in these overlooked locations to capture some of that airflow and turn it into electricity.
The turbines are much smaller than the giant machines seen in open fields. They are designed to fit around existing transport infrastructure, where space is limited and the energy demand is also relatively modest.
That electricity can help power practical features such as bridge lighting, signs or other nearby equipment.
The appeal is in using a place that already exists.
No new field has to be cleared.
No separate tower has to dominate the landscape.
The motorway keeps carrying traffic, the bridge keeps doing its original job, and the moving air around both becomes another small energy source.
It is a useful example of how infrastructure can be redesigned to capture energy from forces that are already present.
Sometimes electricity is not found by building somewhere new.
It is found by noticing what is already moving.
By Fact Fuel

04/10/2026

"Belgium gets less sunshine than Canada — and still installed more solar per square kilometre than Australia, the United States, or China.
The numbers do not make sense until you understand what is actually driving solar adoption.
Belgium has 170 overcast days per year. Its solar resource is half what Spain receives. On paper, it is not a solar country. In practice, it is one of the most solar-dense places on Earth — over 8 gigawatts installed on 30,000 square kilometres, a ratio that outperforms every large solar nation.
The reason is not sunshine. It is electricity prices. Belgian industrial and household electricity costs are among the highest in Europe. When electricity is expensive, capturing even mediocre sunshine becomes rational. The economics that require Saudi Arabian irradiance to justify solar in a low-electricity-cost market require only Belgian irradiance in a high-cost one.
Agrivoltaic w**e estates in the Hageland. Bifacial rooftop installations across Antwerp's industrial zone. Community cooperatives in Flanders where apartment residents pool capital to own solar they cannot install themselves. The Belgian solar industry is built not on natural advantage but on policy persistence and arithmetic that works even when the sky is grey.
Every country that says it has insufficient sunshine to justify solar should look at Belgium's output per square kilometre and then look at its electricity prices. One of those numbers usually explains the other.
Source: Belgian Photovoltaic Association (BelSolar) & Elia Group, 2023"
Article by Factopia

01/10/2026

GENI-us newsletter for October 2026 just went out. Read the latest info here and catch up with where we are up to with renewable energy usage world wide...
https://mailchi.mp/3676c210d9b6/new-solar-panel-and-zenaji-battery-packages-9305048?e=d1d11178ac

30/09/2026

Australia's National Electricity Market reached a remarkable renewable-generation milestone. On September 18, renewables supplied 79.5% of NEM generation at 1:30pm, according to OpenElectricity data by Renew Economy.
Rooftop solar alone supplied 47.9%, while utility-scale solar contributed another 22.1% at that moment. Total renewable generation reached about 26,316 MW, compared with just over 2,000 MW from fossil fuels.
Importantly, this was a momentary generation record for Australia's annual electricity supply now comes from wind and solar. It shows how rapidly rooftop solar and large-scale renewable generation can reshape grid conditions during periods of strong sunlight and moderate demand.
Article by: Unbox Factory

24/09/2026

21/09/2026

Australia is quietly rewriting the rules of energy - and the sun is doing most of the work.
in 2023, Australia became one of the first countries in the world where rooftop solar alone could power the entire national grid during peak daylight hours. Homeowners, farmers, and businesses across Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia pushed solar capacity past 30 gigawatts - more solar per capita than almost any nation on Earth. This didn't happen by accident. A decade of falling panel prices, generous feed-in incentives, and a population hungry for lower electricity bills drove one of the fastest residential solar adoptions ever recorded.
But the story goes deeper than rooftops. Australia's vast outback is now attracting billion-dollar utility-scale solar farms, with projects like the Australian Renewable Energy Hub in Western Australia planning to export green hydrogen - powered by solar - to Asia within this decade. Grid operators are managing the surge with new storage mandates and smarter inverter technology, turning what was once a technical headache into a grid advantage. Challenges remain: network congestion, aging transmission lines, and the midday "duck curve" that oversupply creates. Yet Australia's engineers are treating these as design problems, not dead ends.
The country that once ranked among the world's worst per-capita carbon emitters in now a global case study in solar acceleration. When the sun rises over Western Australia, it doesn't just light up the land - it powers a nation rethinking everything.
Source: Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), Integrated System Plan 2024.

16/09/2026

More than 4 million Australian homes now have rooftop solar, meaning roughly one in three households generates electricity from the Sun. This gives Australia one of the highest rates of residential solar adoption in the world.
The huge amount of rooftop generation is creating a new challenge: managing electricity flowing in both directions across local grids. On exceptionally sunny days, some regions can produce enough solar power to meet most or even all of their electricity demand.
Solar-rich neighbourhoods can experience voltage rises and reverse power flows, putting pressure on transformers and substations designed for traditional one-way electricity networks. Grid operators are therefore developing new ways to manage distributed generation without compromising reliability.
Australia is testing solutions such as smart inverters, dynamic solar-export limits, home batteries, and virtual power plants. What Australia is learning today could become a blueprint for other countries as rooftop solar rapidly expands.
Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics.
University of New South Wales - Sydney.
By: Electrical Technology.